The bad

Many students at Oak Park High School take multiple, rigorous AP courses for their advantages – and inflict tremendous amounts of stress upon themselves.

“Everybody reacts to stress differently… some students handle it better than others, and know how to handle it,” Oak Park psychology teacher Jeff Appell said. “But I think, when you get to a certain level of taking five or six APs, you’re at a level where it’s very difficult to handle it well…you are really overloading yourself.”

One stressor for students is the fear that they will not perform well on the AP exams, administered in May.

Junior Jamie Salinger is worried about the volume of material that she must cover for her exams.

“All we do all year comes down to the test,” Salinger said.

The pressure of AP exams also affects student health. According to the American Psychological Association, teenagers sleep far less than the recommended eight to ten hours per night on average, exercise less when they are stressed and sometimes skip meals to avoid breaks in studying.

“I definitely don’t get much sleep overall – I’m more tired, and with the added stress in the month before the actual test,” Salinger said. “It’s overwhelming.”

Sophomore Kali De Varennes is concerned about the high stress displayed by upperclassmen.

“Watching [the upperclassmen] makes me feel stressed…and nervous,” Varennes said. “It makes me think about how hard it’s going to be for me next year at the same time. From watching [them], I see that it takes away… your life.”

Many factors – internal and external – cause students to take such stressful courses.

“We think a lot of that pressure comes from their parents,” counselor Randy McLelland said. “Parents with the best of intentions will put this unreasonable stress on their students… so it puts all this guilt on the child, and they’re literally going to feel like they’re letting everybody down if they don’t take the class or do well on the exam.”

McLelland suggested that classmates are another factor.

“It kind of feeds on itself,” McLelland said. “You’re rubbing shoulders with all these really smart, highly motivated students, and you tend to believe that, well, ‘If [she or he is] doing it, then I need to do it!’”

In response, teachers and counselors advise students to be aware of the workload involved in a class before signing up for it.

“It’s a complete choice to be involved… students have to be aware that when they are taking AP’s, they’re making a choice to jump into that stressful situation,” Appell said.